Warren Ellis is talking science fiction art and science fiction magazine design. He makes the reasonable point (I summarise) that the sf magazines don’t exactly look cutting edge these days. It’s a fair point. The last great new design I saw was the Analog bedsheet from the ’60s. It’d be nice to have a good looking, well designed SF magazine.
Speaking of covers: saw the cover Ellis’s Fell: Volume 1 Feral City on his site. It’s by Perth artist Ben Templesmith. By weird it’s-a-small-world-itis, I work with Ben’s wife. Who knew?
I’m reading Jack Dann & Gardner Dozois’ anthology Wizards right now. I’m five stories in maybe, having read stories stories by Neil Gaiman, Garth Nix, Mary Rosenblum, Kage Baker, and Eoin Colfer. Interesting and good stuff. I think the Gaiman story “The Witch’s Headstone” is part of his The Graveyard Book, but I don’t know for sure. It has made me think more about YA, though. The stories are good, but I’m not sure that at least one doesn’t talk down a little to its audience, and fall into the pitfalls of writing the kind of story they think kids might like rather than just writing a story.
Reviews for The Jack Vance Treasury are starting to flow in. Following a solid review from PW and a very good review from Booklist, this last week has seen excellent reviews from Matthew Hughes at SF Site and Paul Di Filippo at Scifi.com.
The nice folk over at Australian Specif in Focus have generously invited me to be part of their ‘Focus on Editors‘ series of discussion forums. Starting tomorrow sometime, I’ll be over there ready to talk about whatever interests anyone: editing, anthologies, science fiction, heritage vegetables, the merits of Sufjan Stevens. Whatever appeals. I’ll post here when it’s live. Drop by and say hi.
The Mogwaisoundtrack to Zidane is, after a few listens, a damn cool thing. Kinda dark and brooding at times, but well worth a listen.
British magazine The Word remains my favorite magazine of any kind in the world. They make it look easy to put together a magazine about pop culture.
Still stumbling around Pitchfork. There’s some interesting stuff, some bad writing, and just enough to make it clear than I’m not their target audience.
Although Marianne and I completely missed it on first release, we’ve been watching Coupling on DVD, and it’s just about the funniest thing in the world.
I was saying on an email list yesterday that I find it really easy to not read something, or to avoid reading it. Now, Justine talks about things that stop her reading. I don’t have the same problems exactly, but bad readings, bad meetings, bad covers, or just boredom and ennui can stop me reading.
Oh, and my favorite short story of the month (at least in terms of pub date) is Charlie Stross’s “Trunk and Disorderly” in Asimov’s. Wodehousian space opera, wot! What’s not to like?
